


It’s Always the Quiet Ones

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [40]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sara wanted to gossip and talk about sex and why it was so good with this man and why she didn’t want anyone else in her bed – no matter how good NTSB looked to her right now.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s Always the Quiet Ones

**Title:** It’s Always the Quiet Ones  
 **Series:** [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies)  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Sara/Grissom; Finn/Moreno  
 **Characters:** Sara Sidle, Julie Finlay  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Timeframe:** Sometime around _Double Faul_ t  
 **A/N:** As _Forget Me Not_ draws closer and closer and closer. My therapy is writing.  
 **Disclaimer:** I really don’t make money off of these guys. I wish I did. But until I find a way to get a spec script into the hands of the powers that be, they still do all the real work. I just try to fill in the gaps and don’t make a penny doing it.

 **Summary:** _Sara wanted to gossip and talk about sex and why it was so good with this man and why she didn’t want anyone else in her bed – no matter how good NTSB looked to her right now._

Sara was surprised by how much she liked Finn. She’d respected Catherine, and liked her as a co-worker, but they weren’t really ones to hang out by themselves away from the team, at least not beyond the occasional “men suck” beer night. At first, Catherine’s sexuality and her easy command of a room put Sara on edge - when it wasn’t intimidating her. But then it just became a matter of preference of Greg and Warrick and Nick to the companionship of the other woman. She could never relate to Catherine’s ability to hold it all together with a sense of old-school glamour, even when things were falling apart. They’d definitely come to respect each other, but they’d never been close. Finn was different.

They weren’t all that far apart in age – Finn was a few years older – and despite their differing attitudes toward men, they had a silent understanding of each other that Sara appreciated. Finn knew her type: sexy cops with an attitude; she leapt at it. Sara knew hers: older know-it all-professors; she’d married it. They could giggle about men the way Sara had never had the chance to giggle about boys as a kid. But what Sara appreciated the most about friendship with Finn was the lack of judging. Her world hadn’t been shaped by the prolific teaching of Gilbert Grissom. Sara could talk to the other woman because she didn’t know Gil. She didn’t have an investment in Gil. When she needed a friend to talk to about her marriage and how she was searching for a balance with her personal life and work, Sara could turn to her boss. But when she just wanted to get drunk and talk about her husband, there was Finn. Which was how they ended up at Sara’s place, pay-day takeout in hand.

“Jesus,” Finn was standing in the middle of the kitchen, running her hands along the marble countertops. “How much did you guys pay for this place?”

Sara’s head was deep in the fridge, looking for beer, and she glanced back over her shoulder with a smirk. “You’ll die if I tell you.”

“Probably.”

“Three hundred.”

“You’re kidding.” Finn’s voice dropped about three notches. “Four bedrooms, including a master loft. Two and a half bathrooms. Two car garage. A backyard to die for. Hardwood floors. Marble counters. Ceiling to floor windows. A mud room for god’s sake. Acreage. And you only paid three hundred?”

Sara chuckled and pulled two six packs out of the back of the fridge. She put them both on the counter next to the sandwiches they’d picked up. “Plus the closing fees, so it was more like three-fifty when all was said and done. It was ’07 and the housing bust was just on the horizon so the market was already shaky, and the bank was looking to offload this place. The original asking price was four-fifty but between our public servant discount and the fact that it was pretty much a buyers’ market at the time, we were able to talk them down. I don’t think we could have managed it otherwise. Gil’s condo was good for us, but we needed more space and this fell into our laps. The hardest part was buying it without anyone at work finding out.”

Finn had wandered into the living room and was standing at the fireplace. She picked the wedding photo off the mantle for a better look. “How did you two meet?” It was the end of the tour of the house. They’d already covered the endless bookshelves in the home offices, the pottery from Peru, and the wine from France. Now was the real reason they were here. To unwind, smoke, drink, and bitch about men. It felt good. Finn whistled a bit and put the photo back in its place. “You two look so in love. Wow.” She looked at Sara and repeated the question. “So. How did you meet?”

Sara grinned and led her out onto the balcony just off the living room. She set the beer and sandwiches down on the table and pulled the coffee can where she tossed her cigarette butts out from the corner behind the plants. “This forensic academy conference in San Francisco,” she finally answered. “I sat in the front row of a talk he was giving and he couldn’t take his eyes off me. Afterward … we went to dinner. And coffee. At my place. And then he made breakfast.”

Finn giggled and plopped down into one of the chairs at the glass patio table. “Somehow it doesn’t surprise me in the least that you’d be a sex on the first date girl.”

Sara raised an eyebrow as she twisted the top off of two of the beers. “Really?” She finally took a seat in the other chair.

“It’s always the quiet ones.”

Sara laughed. “Well, with Gil it was different.”

“So your place?”

“Conference was in my town,” she smirked.

Finn grabbed a cigarette out of the pack Sara had set down between them. She lit it and shook her head. “Damn. Always the quiet ones. Go on, girl. Tell me everything.”

Sara laughed and picked through what she actually wanted to share. “Well, it was hot and heavy and storybook perfect for a few months while he was in San Francisco, but then he went back to Vegas and we parted as friends.”

“Friends?” Finn’s eyebrow almost reached her hairline. “I call bullshit.”

“Friends … who really should have stayed together.” How much time could they have saved?

“And when was this?”

“Ninety-six.” Sara lit a cigarette of her own.

Finn rolled her eyes. “Okay, that seals it in my head. You two are going to work things out because two people who have been together longer than both of my marriages combined can’t fall apart. It just can’t happen.”

“We were friends –“

“Wow. Second bullshit call. Come on. Spill the rest of it.”

Sara cracked up. “God, it was so bad for so long. I came down here to help with an internal investigation and ended up getting hired for an open slot on a temporary basis as a consultant. But Gil wanted me to stay and I wanted to stay … and he got me to say yes and then it became permanent.”

“And how did he do that?”

“Ladies don’t kiss and tell about exactly what kind of bedroom negotiations took place.” Sara smirked at the other woman. Finn cracked up. “Anyway,” Sara said around sips of beer, “at first it was fine. I crashed with him while I was looking for a place and we had this kind of pretend … thing … that developed. It was actually an interesting prelude to how things worked when we got together and stayed together.” She took a breath and tried to focus, “But the minute I moved out and was reporting to him as an employee and not his girlfriend, it got … weird.”

Finn’s voice dropped a notch. “How long did it take you to figure it all out?”

“Years.” Sara sighed. “Years. I knew what I wanted but Gil was terrified.”

“Of what?”

Sara shrugged. “Everything. Of being the old guy in the office with the young girlfriend. Of letting himself actually take a risk on love.” She wasn’t about to reveal his secrets. No one knew about Desrae but her. “Of having our lives together change everything for him.”

“What eventually changed his mind?”

“We’re in love with each other.” There, she said it. It was there and real and honest and painful and she meant every word. Any of the other details didn’t matter. What changed his mind was that they were in love with each other. “We’ve been in love with each other since the moment we met and all of the bullshit in between doesn’t change any of that.”

“So why the problems now?” Finn had started in on her sandwich, leaving Sara to actually talk.

“Because sometimes … life is hard to navigate. And it’s not like either of us have a good compass for getting through times like these. He was raised by a single mom. I … well. Let’s say my parent’s solutions to things drove me to an early graduation track.” Again, no need to divulge secrets. Not yet. She liked Finn but she wasn’t about to go gung ho on all her family story until she was sure what she wanted people to know. She also had no desire to talk to her about what Gil had wanted to talk about the other day, and at least Finn hadn’t asked. Yet. Sara wanted to gossip and talk about sex and why it was so good with this man and why she didn’t want anyone else in her bed – no matter how good NTSB looked to her right now. She wasn’t ready to say the words “I’m terrified my marriage is failing” to someone else. She was scared to death that putting it out into the universe would end everything. Because she had been in love with Gil for seventeen years and she planned to be in love with him for the rest of her life and nothing would ever change those feelings.

“How did you guys get through it before? Before you were married? Or together and dating. Or whatever the hell you were doing.”

“Unhealthy and unethical sex.” Sara snorted. “And then we’d give each other the silent treatment. And he’d get a girlfriend and I’d get a boyfriend and then we’d come back together again.”

“Ouch. You might have well been married.”

“This is what I’m saying.”

Finn grinned. “So who did you sleep with? At the lab? To get back at him?”

Sara giggled and picked at her sandwich. The beer was more interesting than the food. “Well, I’m outing her to tell you, so you have to keep your mouth shut.”

“I promise to get drunk enough to not remember this conversation.” Finn accented the promise by opening her third beer.

Sara laughed and took a drink before confessing. “Mandy and I went out one night. That was fun.”

Finn shook her head. “You date girls?”

“Well, I like to sleep with them. Dating is a bit much.” Sara smirked. “I went to Berkeley. It’s kind of a requirement.”

Again a drunken laugh. “Mandy. Print tech Mandy?”

“Yeah, but it was only one night and we haven’t talked about it since.”

“No. No. Lips are sealed. I promise I won’t even look at her with new appreciation.” Finn smirked. “Who else.”

“I had a one night stand with Warrick too.”

“Warrick. Brown? The CSI that the sheriff killed?”

“Undersheriff McKeen. And yeah. We went out for drinks and … that’s kind of my MO.”

“Damn. I can see that.” Finn looked around with a grin. “Um, just so you know, I’m not into girls.”

Sara cracked up and opened another beer. “I promise I won’t make a pass.” She paused and picked at the label on her beer bottle. “I really miss Warrick, actually. He was a good guy.”

“What about Greg?”

“Greg?!” Sara shook her head. “No no no. I know that he’s in love with me. I know that. But we never … he’s my best friend and for once I wasn’t an idiot. I didn’t cross the line. It came close, but … no. In a different world, I’m sure we’re married with two kids and a house with a picket fence. But not in this one.”

Finn snickered. “I think you do protest too much.”

“There was a moment,” Sara admitted. “Just a moment when it almost went that way.”

“What happened?”

“Honestly … it was Gil who showed up at my door and not Greg. If Greg had, I don’t know how things might have been different.”

“The road not taken, hmm?”

“Did you know that Frost wrote that when he stopped to pee on the side of the road? He was tired and cranky and the miles to go part of the poem is really about how he just wanted to get home.”

Finn snickered. “Really?”

“Well, that’s what Gil says. And since he is a condensed volume of all human knowledge, I tend to believe him.” Sara chuckled.

Finn set her beer bottle aside and leaned back. “Okay, so you and Grissom dance around each other for way too fucking long and then what? You finally work your stuff out. Or so it seems. What happened next?”

Sara appreciated that Finn used Grissom’s last name rather than the familiar. He was particular. He wanted to be remembered a certain way in the lab. Few people really had the privilege of calling him Gil, and someone who didn’t know him would never have that right. “Well … I left him twice.” She rolled her eyes. “We sound like a bad soap opera.”

“A little bit. But the reason we love soaps is because we want the love affairs to last.”

Sara smiled. “Yeah.” She stubbed out her cigarette and reached down to give Hank a good scratch on the ears. “I just wish … I wish it was easier with us.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“I keep worrying that after all this time, he’s scared to work it out. But then he’ll say something or do something and things are better.”

“The woes of a marriage in trouble,” Finn shrugged. “You should have seen the ups and downs mine went through at the end. But we were just pretending. What about you two?”

“I love him,” Sara said softly. “And he loves me. But this … it isn’t working.”

“Would you leave the lab if he asked you to?”

Sara’s lack of hesitation surprised even her. “Yes.”

“Then you’re going to be fine. Trust someone who’s been married twice.”

Sara grinned. “I don’t know if I should trust you then. I mean, your advice hasn’t worked.”

“No no no !” Finn laughed. “I’m great at marriage advice. I just suck at applying it to my own situations.” She paused. “Seriously, if you need someone to talk to … don’t keep it bottled up, Sara. It’ll only lead to frustration and resentment and it’s better to take that out on me than him.”

Sara chuckled and leaned back in her chair, absently playing with her wedding ring. “Fair enough.” She stared out at the backyard, seeing past the trees to Peru and the little tent with his books and his trunks and the piles of research he wanted her to help sort. At least he still wanted her involved. That was a good thing.

Finn’s voice jolted her out of her reverie. “Can I ask you something? Totally off topic?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened with Natalie Davis?” Finn leaned her head on her hand and stared at her. “I am sure you get sick of talking about it, but what happened is pretty incredible. It’s book worthy.”

Sara shivered a bit. “There’s already a book in the works and I am so tired of getting messages from crime reporters. Natalie …” she shrugged.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

“I don’t. But at the same time, it’s okay. I just don’t want to talk about it because it was such … it was scary. I’ve been at the hands of abusive boyfriends and gunmen and rapists and my own mother, but for the first time in my life, I was sure I was going to die.” This conversation needed another cigarette, so Sara reached for one. “She blamed Gil for the death of her foster father. So, observant and obsessive cretin that she was, she got a job in the lab on the janitorial staff and started watching us. She figured out what was going on between me and Gil and when the moment was right, she struck. Like a damned snake after prey. And she almost won.”

“How close?”

Sara sighed. “An hour. If they’d found me an hour later I’d have been dead.” She shook her head. “It took me a couple of days to really wake up, but according to Gil I opened my eyes in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. It was like I was trying to say good-bye, just in case.” She shrugged. “I believe it. I can’t imagine dying without getting to say one last goodbye to him.”

Finn shook her head. “You two really do …”

“What?”

“Have something special. Two marriages and I never felt that way about my husbands.”

Sara chuckled a bit. “Well, the pain that comes with loving someone like this really sucks sometimes.”

“How did he handle it? You being taken like that?”

“God.” She sighed. “I think he was more terrified than he’d ever been in his life. And as a result, he was able to actually open up and relax because I survived. With me though, he was perfect. He took care of everything I needed but also didn’t hover when I was ready to go back to work. It was like he knew just what I needed. Which, he did.” She shrugged. “The problem is, we really didn’t … talk about the deeper stuff. And so, when I left Vegas, he took it personally. He thought that it was an affront to him and how he’d helped after the abduction. It was silly, but I can’t fault him. It wasn’t like I was in a real place where I was communicating.” Finn was quiet so Sara continued. “He survived so much with me. Starting with abusive ex back in San Francisco.” A pause and she smiled at Finn. “That was the real reason we parted as friends. He knew I needed to save myself from Dan. Bastard. He could have just taken me. I’d have gone.” Finn laughed. Sara tried to change the subject. “Come on. Tell me about Moreno. You’ve been dodging questions about him.”

“That’s easy. Good sex. Hot cop. You’re the married one with tomes of drama to wade through.”

“You ever think you’ll try for lucky number three?”

“I think I’m done with saying I Do,” Finn said. “But I said that after number one too.”

Sara chuckled. “I can’t imagine doing it again.”

“Where did you get married? That photo in there is amazing.”

“A beach in Costa Rica. In front of this ancient Mission. The brothers at the Mission were our witnesses. The dog was there. And then we went on canoe trips and hiked around Europe.”

“I have a question.”

“What’s that?”

“Did Hallmark write your marriage?”

Sara laughed. It felt good to just let loose. And it was authentic. Finn was right. To say it out loud did make it sound like some script writer had participated in the layout of her life. Yet, to hear someone else say it only validated everything. She had survived. From the day she was born through to this moment, she’d not only survived, she’d lived. She hiked through back countries in Europe and knocked over canoes in South America and made love to her husband under Southwest Desert skies. “Well, when Gil and I got ourselves together, we really got ourselves together.”

“Where’s your favorite place that you two ever had sex?”

Grateful to not talk about Natalie, Sara answered. “There was this tree house we found once. It was the middle of this torrential downpour in the jungle and we weren’t too far from camp, but we had to stop because it was dangerous to continue. And we look up and there is this tree house. So we climbed up to wait it out and well …” she smirked. “We were newlyweds.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“Oh, it was.” She chuckled. “There was also this castle we stayed in over in Scotland. It’s a hotel now, but the rooms are still in the older style. It was nice to feel like a queen for a couple of nights.”

“I’ve heard about the castles they’ve converted.”

“What about you? Favorite place you had sex?”

Finn laughed. “The back seat of a squad car.” She shrugged. “What, I’ve got a type.”

Sara giggled. “Oh, I’m not judging. Gil and I spent a lot of time in the backseat of his Denali. The one he drove while he was here is still part of the fleet. I bet you put the ALS on in the back and it’ll still light up like a Christmas tree.”

“What about his office?”

Sara grinned. “Let’s just say that Nick inherited his desk. I still snicker every time I walk past. Same with DB too, actually. That office was well used.”

“Is there any room in the lab you two didn’t have sex?”

Sara paused, thinking. “We never actually accomplished the break room, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The DNA lab because that’s too dangerous for contamination. Tox. Any of the private offices that weren’t Gil’s.”

“You had sex in Trace though?”

“More than once.” Sara giggled. “Just to be able to fuck with Hodges.”

“Yup,” Finn laughed, “always the quiet ones.”

Sara smirked. “We have more fun.” She stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and realized just how tipsy and tired she was. She’d have to make sure the futon in the library had clean sheets so Finn could catch a few z’s before shift. “How do you think Gil and I were able to get away with what we did for so long? No one would ever suspect the two of us of doing what we did.”

Finn seemed to catch the change in her tone and pushed her hands around a bit, gathering up the garbage on the table. “Trash can?”

Sara pointed to the corner and Finn grabbed it, sweeping the trash into the can. Sara rescued the beer bottles for the recycling and wandered in, leaving them in the sink. She’d drop them off in the bin in the garage when they left for shift. Finn was right behind her. “There’s a futon in the library.”

“Any bugs in there?”

Sara chuckled. “Just the tarantula terrarium.”

“I can handle that.”

Inside the library, Sara stopped as she flipped on the light. The first thing her eyes fell on was the photo of her and Gil outside the library at the Sorbonne. It had been captured by a professor friend of theirs; she was in a short floral dress and Gil in a blue suit that brought out his eyes. She missed those moments together, before life started interfering. No, they’d allowed life to interfere. It wasn’t too late to change it.

She grabbed a clean set of sheets from the trunk in the room and changed the bed. Finn had had more to drink than Sara and by the time she stumbled in from the bathroom, she was half asleep. “Here you go,” Sara handed her a pillow. “Sleep well. I get up around eight.”

“Sounds good.” Finn crashed to the futon. Sara chuckled and turned out the light, walking carefully up the stairs to her bedroom. As she turned off the lights and climbed between the sheets, she sent a final text of the day to her husband.

Things were going to be okay. They had to be.


End file.
